Uhm, no. I said I want to be able to do what I do with Slackware and that is to compile anything I find and make my own package out of it. I don't want to have to depend on other people with esoteric skills to make applications available.

Then based on your repeated requirements -- which appear to be the ability to compile any sort of *nix code, found in-the-wild, on your own, without any detailed knowledge of your particular *nix environment or having any of your own *nix porting skills -- return to Slackware or a similar Linux environment.

Forget the *BSDs, then.

Most FOSS code written for *nix environments is written for Linux, these days. You won't have to do much, if anything, other than follow the developers' step-by-step instructions.

jggimi is right. ports and pkgsrc are the strengths of BSD. You might as well use them. I consider what you have to do on Slackware a weakness. In fact, I've gone through that loop a million times when I used Slackware and it put me off quite a bit.

Win4BSD presents a problem because it's not compatible with the ULE scheduler. You need to revert to the 4BSD scheduler to actually get it to build. It does have some features that are nice like hovering window mode similar to what VirtualBox, Parallels, and VMWare Fusion have implemented as coherence, unity mode, etc.

LOL jgimmi, yes my repeated requirements are to do what you said. I don't have time to learn every OS in the world. I have a job a family and I've been running Slackware for a few years and I can get it to do most of what I want. I don't think I should have to be a BSD-expert to be able to get the apps I want running, and I don't think compiling apps I do want without knowing every detail of the OS is some sort of capital offense except maybe in the eyes of a UNIX-snob or somebody with way too much time on his hands who makes snide remarks at the thought of anybody who had the nerve to ask a question like I did in this forum.

What is so offensive about asking if it's possible to make my own packages?

Go back and read my opening post and see if you still think your nastiness is called for. One of the things I like least about UNIX is the prima donnas. Some stereotypes are unfortunately too true. Have a nice day!

nijatux, I have no idea what you're talking about. We don't "have" to do anything with Slackware. I built hundreds of packages by tracking down all the real dependencies, choosing my own build options etc. and I set up a very nice system for myself that I use day in and day out without any problems. I chose Slackware over other distros specifically because I have to understand exactly what goes into my system and I have enough control without having to be a kernel developer. I make my own packages including only what I want and nothing else- no bloat. If I wanted a packaged system there are many to choose from, however that type of system is not for me. One of the things that bothers me most about Free, Net, and to a lesser extent OpenBSD is the package bloat. You have to install what the package maintainer wants, not what you want. I can build a Slackware system in about half the space of a similarly-equipped BSD.

I don't need gstreamer, aspell, gnome-vfs or thousands of other so-called dependencies that really aren't, and I don't have those things on my Slackware systems. Try building a desktop in any BSD without all that crap..a good example is ROX-filer. Look what you need to build it on Linux and then look what you get when you install it from pkgsrc or ports in *BSD. Scary, isn't it

One of the things that bothers me most about Free, Net, and to a lesser extent OpenBSD is the package bloat. You have to install what the package maintainer wants, not what you want. I can build a Slackware system in about half the space of a similarly-equipped BSD.

You can edit every port's Makefile and edit which dependencies you really want to install, also you may set CONFIGURE_ARGS="--with --my --options ..." in the Makefile as you would do by typing ./configure --with --my --options ...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randux

I don't need gstreamer, aspell, gnome-vfs or thousands of other so-called dependencies that really aren't, and I don't have those things on my Slackware systems. Try building a desktop in any BSD without all that crap..a good example is ROX-filer. Look what you need to build it on Linux and then look what you get when you install it from pkgsrc or ports in *BSD. Scary, isn't it

You can do pkg_delete -f every package you want, even if it is a dependency, but I agree that making all this gstreamer shit mandatory is not a good thing.

__________________religions, worst damnation of mankind"If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened." Linus TorvaldsLinux is not UNIX! Face it! It is not an insult. It is fact: GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”.vermaden's:linksresourcesdeviantartspreadbsd

Yes you were definitely a BIG help when I asked questions about options and streamlining things when I was running FreeBSD before

What are the knobs in FreeBSD? I couldn't find anything in man ports and man -k knobs didn't turn up anything. Is this explained somewhere?

If I run it again I will have to ask you new questions because I can't find all the great threads on bsdforums.org anymore I had a few posts of my own I would like to find like fixing the emacs keymaps and setting prompts for all the different shells etc.

I would still like to be able to make my own packages and not have to rely on the port maintainers. Anyway I am now installing Solaris and I will see if I can get the winbloze guest running and learn a little about making Solaris do what I want.

If I run it again I will have to ask you new questions because I can't find all the great threads on bsdforums.org anymore I had a few posts of my own I would like to find like fixing the emacs keymaps and setting prompts for all the different shells etc.

What does fixing the Emacs keymaps has to do with building your packages? It is the same on any platform running Emacs. I do not use that crappy editor so I do not know. The same goes for shells.
I use vi most of the time and sometimes ed. Ask me how to customize vi and I will help you. My shell of choice is Korn. What do you want to do with it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randux

I would still like to be able to make my own packages and not have to rely on the port maintainers. Anyway I am now installing Solaris and I will see if I can get the winbloze guest running and learn a little about making Solaris do what I want.

And you can make your own packages without using ports. Usually is
as simple as
1. Downloading source
2. Unzip/tar extract
3. Run ./config
4. make
5. make install

If it doesn't compile patch the source and do it again.

If it is GNU crap you probably need to use gmake instead of make.
So who is preventing you from building your own packages?

Yes you were definitely a BIG help when I asked questions about options and streamlining things when I was running FreeBSD before

You are welcome, I also used Slackware in the past BTW

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randux

What are the knobs in FreeBSD? I couldn't find anything in man ports and man -k knobs didn't turn up anything. Is this explained somewhere?

check /usr/ports/KNOBS file, also you may list them all like that:# egrep -o -r "(WITH|WITHOUT)_[_0-9A-Z]+" /usr/ports | sort -u

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randux

I would still like to be able to make my own packages and not have to rely on the port maintainers. Anyway I am now installing Solaris and I will see if I can get the winbloze guest running and learn a little about making Solaris do what I want.

I am currently running OpenSolaris 2008.11 @ Dell Latitude D630 with 64bit VirtualBox from project's site and everything works great, especially with Guest Additions.

__________________religions, worst damnation of mankind"If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened." Linus TorvaldsLinux is not UNIX! Face it! It is not an insult. It is fact: GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”.vermaden's:linksresourcesdeviantartspreadbsd

...I don't think I should have to be a BSD-expert to be able to get the apps I want running...

I'd like to do some level-setting on why porting is the way it is, and why I recommend Linux to you, and Slackware in particular.

Please bear with me if this is all review for you. First, on the complexity of "porting" applications:

While Linux and the BSDs are both Unix-like, and appear very similar to end-users running shells or X Windows, they have remarkably different antecedents and are internally architected quite differently.

BSD's history began as a series of enhancements and improvements to AT&T's Unix. Eventually, BSD replaced all AT&T code. Please consider the BSD-based OSes something akin to "forks" of AT&T Unix, from an operational and architectural perspective.

Linux, however, is a kernel. In order to use the Linux kernel in an OS, a Linux distribution is crafted, containing userland libraries and applications, typically comprised mainly of components from the GNU Project.

GNU ("GNU's Not Unix"), was a project founded more than 25 years ago to develop and distribution a FOSS Unix-compatible OS. That initial intent has not wavered -- the gnu.org website proclaims that there is a "GNU Operating System" and the kernel is "not yet ready." Sure. Well, whatever they've been smoking, the GNU Project has successfully produced a large number of applications and libraries that have found use in most, if not all, Unix and Unix-like OS vendors and projects.

Even when Unix was an AT&T-managed research tool in the 1970s, there were variations between implementations from platform to platform. If you wanted to run an application originally written for the PDP-11 on your VAX or Interdata, you had to "port" it. So Unix administrators were porters, as that was a required skill at the time.

When Unix went commercial, over time there were many variants, some with vastly different operations and architectures. OSF/1-base Unix systems were vastly different from SVR4-based systems. These wide variations even among Unix systems complicated matters further for the administrator who wanted to "port" an application to their platform of choice.

Standards were developed, such as POSIX and SUS, designed to aid in the "porting" of applications from one Unix (or Unix-like) system to another. When followed, they simplify porting, but they do not eliminate manual effort entirely. And only a subset of application projects follow such standards.

Second, regarding the Unix-like OS marketplace, Linux, and the porting/packaging of applications:

The market leader for FOSS for Unix or Unix-like platforms, by a wide margin over any other, is Linux. As you already know. This is why you are likely to need less knowledge or skill to configure and compile an FOSS application on Linux than on any other.

The commercial Unix systems, the BSDs, and most Linux distributions spend a great deal of time and effort on simplifying or eliminating the porting effort for their customers/users. The more popular Linux distributions have tens of thousands of pre-built, ready-to-execute applications available for download and install. (Not Slackware, of course.)

The smaller distributions will either have fewer prepackaged applications, will use the ports/packaging system of one of the majors, or directly exploit the ports/packages of a major distribution directly.

In the case of the *BSDs, the largest library of prepackaged ports/packages, by far, is FreeBSD, with nearly 20,000 third party applications and tools that will not require any manual porting.

Because you reject the use of prepackaged binaries, and you reject the dependency requirements of porting work done by others, and you want to use any hunk of code you find online -- (written for Linux, in most cases)... Slackware is the distribution for you.

Last edited by jggimi; 7th January 2009 at 04:44 PM.
Reason: clarity, typos

To be clear I never said I rejected prepackaged binaries or anything else. I simply don't want to *have* to depend on someone else porting something I want. I want to be able to do that myself, and my question was how much effort/knowledge, etc was required and if it was reasonable. Then we ran off on a tangent...

Even so, I still want a high-performing BSD to run as a secondary workstation. I may even try to develop some porting skills, but I have a full plate and can't give it the time I would like. I have pretty much given up on running any virtualization on BSD after trynig the big 3 and seeing the state of things and I'm pretty disappointed.

In case anyone's interested, openSUSE has a VirtualBox package that is really amazing. First I tried the Xen and I was amazed at the poor performance. I have to say, though, the packaging of Xen on openSUSE is superb, nothing is left out from installing the Xen-enabled kernel, to automagically updating Grub, and reminding you to reboot.

VirtualBox isn't packaged very smooth on openSUSE. It can only be run as root and you don't get the automagic popups to enter a root password when you try to execute it in Gnome, it silently dies.

However, when you run it as it needs to be run, the GUI is fine and the performance is absolutely spectacular. Even Pig/OS runs like stink in VirtualBox.

The scary thing about openSUSE is how much they hide the guts. I guess that makes it an outstanding bloze-replacement option and commercial choice. I hate to think what will happen if (when) all the magical smoke and mirrors break and something goes wrong.

In the meantime I'm also going to install some BSD again on that box. I like them all for different reasons. I wish NetBSD were more stable. It's fast. OpenBSD is great as usual and now has pretty recent packages, you can make a really nice desktop. Even VLC looks great on my widescreen. I also like FreeBSD but I'm not sure why. I guess having Vermaden around makes it easy to like

Uhm, no. I said I want to be able to do what I do with Slackware and that is to compile anything I find and make my own package out of it. I don't want to have to depend on other people with esoteric skills to make applications available.

That's rather nonsense, to build a proper package for Slack you have to have some skills too. If you just do some ./configure ... && make install the you'll ruin your Slack at once because you have to rely on someone elses idea of a proper Linux installation. Try it, test it thoroughly and have fun.

I don't think I should have to be a BSD-expert to be able to get the apps I want running, and I don't think compiling apps I do want without knowing every detail of the OS is some sort of capital offense except maybe in the eyes of a UNIX-snob or somebody with way too much time on his hands who makes snide remarks at the thought of anybody who had the nerve to ask a question like I did in this forum.

You don't need to know every detail of the OS or be a "BSD-expert" to install software on FreeBSD, you just have to take roughly 5 minutes of your life to read the documentation (ok, 10 if you read slow). The way you seem to be after for installing software, would dictate learning every software packages configuration options and dependencies in the first place -- how is that for a waste of time ? It's like writing an ELF binary in octal instead of using an assembler/linker, fun but wasteful.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randux

What is so offensive about asking if it's possible to make my own packages?

Nothing, but peoples paintaince is not unlimited.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randux

One of the things I like least about UNIX is the prima donnas. Some stereotypes are unfortunately too true. Have a nice day!

Would you prefer a group of Steve Ballmer clones? Considering that this is [sadly] mostly a male population (therefore, primo uomo not prime/prima donne/donna), and even among the women here; I rather doubt any of one here has sung the lead in an opera, although a few probably do use Opera. Thus I would generally consider that an attempt to insult some of these people, lol.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randux

I chose Slackware over other distros specifically because I have to understand exactly what goes into my system and I have enough control without having to be a kernel developer.

To do this under {Free,Net,Open}BSD, you must learn how to read and understand English. Being able to figure out shell script and Makefiles is also helpful to go to the deepest guts; but likely already a skill you have, from the ./configure --args && make bits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randux

One of the things that bothers me most about Free, Net, and to a lesser extent OpenBSD is the package bloat. You have to install what the package maintainer wants, not what you want. I can build a Slackware system in about half the space of a similarly-equipped BSD.

At least on FreeBSD, many ports that have options that can be adjusted (MPlayer for example), will allow the user to adjust them via knobs or options. Likewise on OpenBSD, there are precompiled flavors of various packages installed to suit; and one can compile from source when they don't do what is desired.

Learn to read.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randux

Try building a desktop in any BSD without all that crap..a good example is ROX-filer. Look what you need to build it on Linux and then look what you get when you install it from pkgsrc or ports in *BSD. Scary, isn't it

I don't use pkgsrc, but I do use ports. FreeBSDs rox-filer port depends on the prerequisites from the X Windows System, GTK+, and a few Gnome related crap that appears to be required for common file manager stuff. What does Linux require?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randux

To be clear I never said I rejected prepackaged binaries or anything else. I simply don't want to *have* to depend on someone else porting something I want. I want to be able to do that myself, and my question was how much effort/knowledge, etc was required and if it was reasonable. Then we ran off on a tangent...

Independence is a virtue; being able to read is another one. If I was you, I would be thankful that there are few major desktop related programs these days that need porting assembly code, or transitioning the program to a different processor architecture outside the X86 family.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randux

In case anyone's interested, openSUSE has a VirtualBox package that is really amazing. First I tried the Xen and I was amazed at the poor performance.

The scary thing about openSUSE is how much they hide the guts. I guess that makes it an outstanding bloze-replacement option and commercial choice. I hate to think what will happen if (when) all the magical smoke and mirrors break and something goes wrong.

Some people love that, others (like me) dislike it ;-)

At the knobs thing, they can vary but there are some popular ones. You might want to read the documentation.

Porting tends to be easy (or easier) if the devs have atleast considered the possibility of their software being used on a Unix that isn't Linux.

But generally its not easy. Hey, Grey Lehey even wrote a book about porting Unix software (please google).

I guess one of the hurdles would be figuring out all the GNU stuff such as automake/autoconf.

That is fantastic book. From his web page you can also download freely
Lion's Commentary, The Unix Text Processing, and The Complete FreeBSD.
I just do not know of any better books for their target audience.
Kernel Hacking, Text Processing using vi+sed+awk+Troff, and FreeBSD.

nijatux, I have no idea what you're talking about. We don't "have" to do anything with Slackware. I built hundreds of packages by tracking down all the real dependencies, choosing my own build options etc. and I set up a very nice system for myself that I use day in and day out without any problems. I chose Slackware over other distros specifically because I have to understand exactly what goes into my system and I have enough control without having to be a kernel developer. I make my own packages including only what I want and nothing else- no bloat. If I wanted a packaged system there are many to choose from, however that type of system is not for me. One of the things that bothers me most about Free, Net, and to a lesser extent OpenBSD is the package bloat. You have to install what the package maintainer wants, not what you want. I can build a Slackware system in about half the space of a similarly-equipped BSD.

Customize the ports. A lot of ports that have developer-supported customizations will ask you, upon compile, to choose the options you want to use. If a port doesn't have developer-supported options, then you can modify the Makefile. There are also documents knobs that you can set at compile time or permanently in make.conf. As vermaden mentioned, you can also force package removal at any time. So, even if something is compiled as a dependency and it's not actually required, then remove it. I can be blunt here. You came here expecting something similar to Slackware. You can achieve the same results as you did on Slackware with any BSD, but the methods are different. You need to read about those methods. I can give you a starting point. This is my make.conf. Thanks to vermaden for making his available when I was learning two years ago.

Just a small note to everyone:
Please keep things nice, it is obvious people expect different things from an operating system and have different preferences, this is why different operating systems exist.
Please respect other peoples opinions and preferences, even if you might not agree with them.

__________________
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.

Marry a partner you seem to like or love. If if after some time he or she annoys you too much, get a divorce and marry somebody else. If after a couple of marriages, you still prefer the original partner , just re-marry him or her.

Simple isn't it ?

__________________
You don't need to be a genius to debug a pf.conf firewall ruleset, you just need the guts to run tcpdump

Marry a partner you seem to like or love. If if after some time he or she annoys you too much, get a divorce and marry somebody else. If after a couple of marriages, you still prefer the original partner , just re-marry him or her.